When you are a younger person, you often don’t take the time to consider heart health.  We tend to think of it as an older persons issue.  But I can assure you it isn’t.  One of my first experiences with someone I know having a heart issue was when I was about 14 years old, sitting with our family at dinner and our neighbor called freaking out that something was wrong with her son – he was 11 years old.  My mother ran over there and he was in full cardiac arrest.  My mom did CPR and saved his life and now he is in his 50s and still going strong.  You do not need to be “old” to take care of your heart.

Exercise

You need to keep your heart healthy with exercise.  If you become sedentary, you are much more at risk for issues not matter what age you are.  Consider our electronic generation – they sit on phones, tablets, computers and don’t even more except their fingers.  This is going to be a generation with major medical issues if they don’t change.  My kids do their fair share of electronic activities but we also own horses – and when you own horses there is a great deal of work to be done every day NO EXCUSES.  It is a built in fitness program.  Benefits of consistent exercise include:

• ability for your heart to pump with less strain
• lowered risk of heart disease
• improved cholesterol and fat levels
• reduced arterial inflammation
• weight loss
• improved blood pressure
• reduced resting heart rate
• lowered risk of stroke

Although you can go to a gym and exercise, you don’t need to.  There are plenty of ways to do something – anything.

• park farther away from entrances when shopping
• go hiking, biking, swimming, walking
• do some sort of activity every hour – squats, step in place, shadow boxing etc..
• take the stairs as often as possible
• get a dog AND WALK IT
• get a horse AND CARE FOR IT
• yoga, pilates, tai chi
• weight training

Diet

There are many many diets out there that will help improve heart health.  Some of them are as follows:

• Cardiac Diet – This is a very strict diet that will result in weight loss.  It eliminates sugars, reduces sodium and zero trans fats.  You can find some sample menus planned out for you online which makes it really easy – sort of a plug and play…
• Keto Diet – I love the Keto diet and highly recommend it but it has been somewhat controversial.  This is a high fat, high protein, low carb way of eating.  Some of my favorite recipes are keto meals.
• Mediterranean Diet – This diet is based on whole and natural foods and emphasizes a plant based diet.  Elimination of processed foods is a priority.

Notes

Dr. Allen Amorn knows it is important to care for your heart and there are many other ways than what I have listed above – this is a sampling.  But you also need to know what warning signs of poor heart health are:

• chest pain
• heartburn
• weariness
• shortness of breath
• left arm pain – can also be back, jaw, shoulders etc…
• aches and stiffness
• sweating (when no other reason is attributable)
• anxious for no reason
• nauseous
• stomach pressure
• excessive burping
• sudden feeling of fullness
• dizzy

Let’s care for our hearts together and help raise our children to be healthy adults!